1. I consider you one of the most empathetic people I've ever (sort of) met in my life. Where does that come from? Would you agree that empathy is one of your strong suits? Has it ever caused you problems? Would you change it if you could?
I have no idea where it comes from. I remember being taught "do unto others" and "walk a mile in their shoes," but I think I was always experiencing what others were going through, and relating their experiences to my own. I had no siblings to toughen my empathetic leanings, and always identified with the underdog, be it an actual dog in some movie or tv show, or another child on the school playground. I wasn't "normal," I didn't "fit in," and I wasn't tough enough to brazen it out. So when another child was ostracized I gravitated to (usually)her. Lifelong pattern. Except I had an epiphany my senior year of high school, and realized that the cliques and groups I'd wanted so badly to be accepted into were filled with people no more secure or blessed than I, and many of them were not fascinating, exceptional people. Were in fact, rather mundane and small-minded. And boring. So I stopped caring about "fitting in," and was much happier. But the damage was done as far as being and identifying with underdogs was concerned.
Empathy ties in with another trait of mine: indecision. I can see all sides of an argument or a problem, weigh each of their merits, again and again, a circular, neverending process that leads most often to frustration rather than to a decision. I've also gotten involved with a few people who were all too glad to let me sort out their lives, and surrendered all decisions, responsibilities to me. Backing out of those was sticky. And in more than one case, unpleasant.
I've come to realize that in many areas of my life I have no willpower, no control. It's either half a cake or none, take in the street child or donate to the shelter and walk away, rescue the feral three-legged cat or let it die. I would like to be able to walk a path on middle ground. But it doesn't look likely. My only control is abstention.
2. I'm all about the inner me. Let's talk about the inner you. How does dancing make inside Beverly feel? Is it something she cares about? Is it something she could give up? Does she get to do it these days or is it something she remembers with fondness but no wish to continue?
My mom sent me to dance classes at five because I would be standing still and fall down. I tripped over the pattern in the rug, dropped half the things I picked up. Grace was not my friend. The dance class made me feel beautiful, but it did little to change my innate clumsiness. I do have a very strong sense of rhythm, and a little spirit in the end of my spine that dislikes not being able to move to the music. In high school we had our dances at a local community center. There was a balcony over the bandstand at one end of the room. That balcony was mine. There was room for two to dance, but I owned it from the time I arrived. One by one, girls and guys would climb the stairs and match me for a song, or three, but in the end they'd leave, and I'd dance on. No specific steps or moves, just the way the music moved me. Mindless. All about the music...and a little bit about the words, maybe. I never really danced with anybody. It wasn't something to share. It really wasn't exhibitionism, either, exactly. It was just--my place.
The body remembers the limberness and the quickness and the emphatic, driving movement, and sometimes echoes it, in a paler, gentler fashion. And up until the last 18 months I was still doing barre exercises. I took ballet in college, until the orthopedist said "no jumps, no turns, no plies." Which didn't leave me even the barre at that point. But I did them in the pool, ha! And while I was dancing, I was also dancing on figure skates. I still choreograph routines in my head when I hear new music.
I still move to music. I close my eyes and remember the extension and the stretch of limb, of muscle and tendon, and reproduce it carefully, a very pale shadow, a shocking wasted thing. But it feels good, and in my head it's pretty.
Dancing is also a metaphor for me, tapdancing, stalling, distracting, filling in time till we find the file with the necessary information to finish the report, or the boss walks in the door and I still have the client on the line, or until the end of the day finally arrives. And the happy dance, of course. "And now we do the dance of joy!" (tm) Balki Bartokomous.
3. You seem like a well-rounded person to me. Is there anything you can't do that you wish you could do? Is there anything you'd give up to be able to do it? What would you give up? How would it change you? Would it be worth it or would it be something you just had to do because you had to do it and hang the consequences?
I'm experiencing abrupt curtailment of my physical abilities, and I hate it. Changing it is coming so very slowly, and I don't know how much I'll be able to get back. And I've given up months--more than a year--already, of my life. I don't want to give up anything else to get back something I thought was mine as a right. Does that sound spoiled and self-centered? Okay. I give up your or anyone's perception of me as a generous and caring-about-others person to get my mobility back. And maybe once I'm back to mobile, I can find a job that won't kill me, either emotionally or physically--and I'm sure I'll be giving up decent financial remuneration for that little coda.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I answered the question you asked.
4. Assuming your family is all well and happy, what are the next three things you consider important to your happiness? Do you have them? Will you get them? If you do not have them, are you philosophical about that or angry or something else? If you don't have them and you never get them, will you still be happy? If you have them and lost them, how would you rebuild?
Except for four years' military service, I have lived in the same house on the same street in the same town all my life. I'd like to travel before I die, before I'm too old to enjoy the experience. I don't know if I'll be able to do that. But at least I'd like to move to another, radically different part of the country. From NC to Washington State, Oregon, or Vancouver, or BC. A change of scene will make me happy. My muse apparently cleaned out my bank account and skipped off to Rio, where she's living the high life with a series of handsome young tango dancers. I'd like a new muse. I'm defining writer's block in a whole new magnitude.
If she's gone for good, though, I think I may have a career as an editor. My writing group won't let me quit, despite my showing up empty-handed for months. And they keep shoving mss. at me to critique and tweak.
I don't have a lot of "goals" at this point in my life. What I do have is an essay on the abrasion of age and experience on emotion that has been trying to get onto the page (or screen) for a week now. Getting it from my head into actual real words would make me happy.
5. Where do you consider the most romantic (not in a love sense, but in a Romantic/literary sense) place in the world? Would you want to go there? Would it be your first choice? If not, where would you choose to go if you could go anywhere? Why there and not the Romantic spot, or why the Romantic spot if you would go there?
England. No, Scotland. or Ireland. Maybe Wales or Cornwall. In my head, at least. Rocky, craggy, foggy, damp, brown and green and icy shallow running water. I will get there one day, even though I'm well aware, intellectually, that it's damp, foggy, rough terrain for walking, scarce plumbing and central heating, and not much in the way of local cinemas or many of the other things USians take for granted. And I will love it. I may not want to live there indefinitely, but I will love walking the land and breathing the fog or the mist or the rain, hearing the water tumbling over rocks and the silence I imagine to be still a part of those places, which actually is an absence of man-made, industrial, residential noise.
Good questions, dear. Hope I did them justice.
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